Watchers
by Merganser
Summary: Ansem and the Princesses. On the nature of darkness, and its appeal- even temptation- to those who stand guard at the borders.


"_Once the Keyhole opened, he hardly paid attention to us anymore..."_

There is a part about being a Princess of Heart that none of the seven will never mention to anyone else. Alice is too young, thankfully, to understand it fully. Kairi has begun to understand it, and so it goes on up through Belle, who might have the best grip on it of all seven, thanks to the Beast.

It has something to do with the way Ansem walked across the floor, watching the six of them in the quiet time between arrivals. There was enough ambient magic in the Bastion for him to take on some semblance of physical shape when he desired, and so he would stalk up and down the hall, pacing, slowly, one hand stroking the feathered blade that bound their vital spirits. (Aurora swore she could see pink crystals trailing from the hilt.) Ansem walked, and he stared. He gazed at them, crystalline, perfect, while he tried to work out some problem of the placement of ship's blocks, or the transmutation and balancing of darkness. He moved slowly down the hall, and he stared deeply at his prizes, but he never touched them, or made any attempt to.

_Maddening_, Cinderella whispered, as he swept by, absently rubbing his fingers together. (The princesses had found they could talk, if they wished, as if the spell that held their bodies asleep had freed their minds to come and go as they pleased.)

_Yes,_ Snow had whispered back,_ he- it- it is so..._

_Ungentlemanly, to stare so,_ Aurora had finished, and the three fell silent. Ansem reached the end of the hall and turned with a soft _shussh_ of robes.

_If only..._Snow began, wistfully, and stopped as he paused in front of her niche. The Bastion Lord tapped his heel on the floor, deep in thought, then moved on. The other princesses heard a tiny sigh.

_He loves books so_, Belle had said later.

_And he would be so handsome_, Jasmine had found herself saying, _poor man..._

The truth is that Ansem is already handsome, terribly so, with strong shoulders and slim fingers and deepred eyes set beneath a sweep of hawk's hair. The Bastion Lord is all predatory and lovely, and he walks his halls with the sure grace of a cat, and he gazes at his prizes with an unreadable look in those fathomless eyes.

_Look_, Belle had said one day. _Look at him..._

The seventh was getting closer with each sunset. Maleficient was gone more and more now-not that the witchqueen ever spent much time in Ansem's place of power, where patches of stony shadow thudded gently to the pulse of their liege lord. She had not returned to the Great Hall since last installing Jasmine there, some weeks ago. (_Was it weeks?_ Cinderella muttered. _Time slides between heartbeats and days, through years here, and when was the last time I felt mouse's feet on my arms and whiskers in my ears?_) The seventh princess was coming, and her escorts came, surrounding, one in front and one trailing, and Ansem paces more frequently now. His white cloak glows in the evenings, in the flame of the setting sun, and Jasmine whispers tales of djinn and ifrit to her five sisters. The sun slides from the windows, at last, casting them all in a darkness that seeped through the ice coffins.

_Look_, Belle said again, and they are aware of a flickering from within their captor. Something is moving. Something is wriggling beneath his curved palms, cupped protective beneath his ribcage. Something- he is poised, and the princesses freeze and brace, and suddenly there is a pulsing surge of magic roaring through the hall. The coffins fracture, minute cracks spiderwebbing the surface, and a crystalline fog ghosts into the air. Ansem stands and flings his arms wide. The powersurge wraps itself around him, lapping at his feet, devouring, and he clenches his fists and the concussion knocks the six back, breathless. Aurora grabs at her surroundings-_this is my body, this is ice and stone, this is carpet and wood and cloth, there is Cinder and Jasmine and little Alice_- and pulls herself out of her body and into the place where she can see their gaoler again, standing on his own flagstones, taming the rush of magic flowing through his hands, and he turns like a dancer on center stage.

In Ansem's curve-framed chest blooms a supernova of dark light, flame-edged, dark-centered, pulsing as his slow-thudding heart might. He holds his head high. His amber eyes glow luminous, flaring bright, and he regards Aurora unblinkingly, as if he might devour or destroy with a look alone. She cannot move, body or soul, and she realizes the silence around her is that of held breaths.

Ansem looks her up and down, slowly, searchingly, then reaches out towards her face- she is going to end, right here, be fragmented and dissolved into the magnetic supernova of his heart, she cannot breathe- ice jumps from his index finger and seals a crack in her prison.

He turns away to check the other princesses. Aurora blinks rapidly and breathes raggedly in.

He fingers the hilt of his sword, or the lapels of his fine cloak, or the embroidery on his cuffs. He always touches something as he walks, but he never touches them, any of them- simply stands and stares, the connoisseur in an empty hall. The princesses' minds may be free to roam, but their bodies are stiff and cold and silent, enveloped in ice, folded away from even the simple contact of air. They cannot feel.

They cannot feel the simplest touch, and for the princesses, the call of darkness may be expressed in the slow trail of a fingertip down a cheek, and the spreading, darkening, enfolding warmth that follows it.


End file.
